The 2010 harvest has been late but so far looks sensational. The later ripening has also had the added advantage of lower light angles and lots of great photograph opportunities. Enjoy a sampling of photos from Tablas Creek, taken between October 25th and November 5th, 2010

The end of September is a great time to walk the vineyard. Most varieties are ripe or nearly so, but most of the fruit is still on the vines. And you get a great chance to see where everything is. We're harvesting our last Grenache Blanc and Syrah this week, and our first Grenache Noir and Roussanne.
Mourvedre, Counoise, and Picpoul are still a few weeks off. But the vineyard looks great, and we're excited with 2009.

We had a break in the weather early this week, with morning fog and daytime highs in the mid-70s. The vineyard is poised for veraison, and I spent a few hours prowling around taking pictures mostly in our Grenache, Mourvedre and Vermentino blocks.

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It seems like progress in direct shipping goes in waves. There's a small flurry of movement, in states widely separated in geography and culture, and then a period when nothing much happens. Then, for whatever reason, progress starts back up.

About six weeks ago I wrote a post State of the Union, Wine Shipping Edition in which I broke down the 51 shipping destinations (50 states plus the District of Columbia) into ten tiers, based on the ease and cost of doing business in each. I could have written essentially the same article any time in the previous two years without necessitating significant changes (OK, there was one change: Montana became a shipping state in late 2013, but that was it). Yet the six weeks since I wrote my State of the Union have seen two major developments, with a couple of others seemingly in the works. Given that there aren't that many states still left that prohibit or severely curtail winery shipping (15, as of late January) that's a measurable blip. Let's look at them one by one.

Cheers to Massachusetts!We were thrilled when, late last year, the great state of Massachusetts passed a workable direct-shipping law (thanks, in part, to former New England Patriots quarterback-turned-vintner Drew Bledsoe). Although the law went into effect January 1st, 2015, it took the state a few weeks to process the flood of applications they received. But as of now, we can happily ship to residents of the Bay State, and they can sign up for our wine clubs. And after the winter they’ve had, it sounds like most of them need a drink!

A Bill Passes in South DakotaSouth Dakota was until very recently one of the states with the most curious collection of wine shipping laws. We couldn't ship wine there if we received an order, but only when someone made a purchase in-person at the winery. And even then, the shipment was subject to the state's individual out-of-state alcohol purchase transport limit of one gallon per instance. That's five bottles, maximum. But just two weeks ago, the governor signed into law House Bill 1001, which sets up a straightforward shipper's permit requiring that wineries remit taxes and periodic reports, and verify the legal age of the purchaser. Pretty standard stuff, for wine shipping, and only a moderate burden to wineries. The law will go into effect January 1st, 2016.

Progress in IndianaIndiana is another state that throws some interesting roadblocks in between wineries who wish to sell their wares in the state and Hoosier consumers who would like to purchase them. Right now, the state limits direct shipments to wineries who both take an initial order in-person at the winery, and don't have a relationship with a wholesaler in the state. The state differs from South Dakota in that only the initial order must be taken in person (not every order) but the wholesaler prohibition means that it's always been a no-go for us. In late January, the Indiana Senate passed Senate Bill 113, which would remove both the in-person requirement and the distributor prohibition, albeit at the expense of raising the winery shipping permit from $100/year to $500/year, which would make it one of the five most expensive in the country. Still, this would count as progress. The bill is now in committee in the Indiana House of Representatives.

Pennsylvania: Glimmers of HopeWith the passage of the direct shipping bill in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania (America's 10th-largest wine market) assumed the mantle of the largest wine market to prohibit winery-direct shipping. But readers familiar with Pennsylvania will understand why, despite a growing in-state wine industry, there are unusually strong forces that stand in the way. Pennsylvania is one of only two states (Utah is the other) where wine sales are restricted to state-run stores, and with more than 600 stores in the state system, the combination of massive revenue that the stores direct into state coffers and the influence of the state employees' union mitigates against rapid change. Still, the prospects for change seem brighter now than at any time in my memory. The new Governor Tom Wolf went on record in February saying "I'm in favor of direct shipping". The bill, however, that passed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives last week looks to have limited prospects, because it moves faster than the Senate and Governor are comfortable with in privatizing the state stores. In any case, it seems like there is at least the possibility of movement in the Keystone State, although I'm not holding my breath.

Delaware: A Bill in the Works?Finally, one more small crack of daylight, albeit in one of the smallest states of the union. In November, Delaware House Minority Whip Deborah Hudson made winery direct shipping the focus of her weekly address, pointing out that Delaware was one of just 9 states that prohibit shipping to consumers and inviting her fellow legislators to "objectively weigh the facts and set aside the baseless fears of special interest groups, allowing our residents and Delaware wineries to join the 21st Century". Amen to that!

As always, the best place to find out what's going on in the direct shipping realm, and to learn how you can help, is Free the Grapes.

Normally, the sign at the edge of our head-trained Mourvedre vineyard just outside our tasting room is to protect people from a twisted ankle, should they stray off the tarmac. Now, we're worried we might lose them in the cover crop!

The growth in the vineyard's green winter coat over the last month has been amazing to watch. Whether because of the three dry years which preceded this one, or because of the work we've been doing with soil fertility, or because of the year's relative warmth (or some combination) we've never seen a cover crop so lush. Another view, looking up the hill behind the winery that we call Mt. Mourvedre:

Everything is growing. Yes, the cover crops that we planted are growing fast, but we're seeing lots of native grasses and wildflowers, like the mustards you see below:

The yellow of the mustard isn't the only hue on display. We're also seeing our sweet peas flowering:

And this pretty purple wildflower that grows low to the ground:

And it is wet. Although it hasn't rained much since the 3.9" we received the first weekend of February, the soils are still loaded with moisture, as evidenced by the ubiquity of the water-loving plant miner's lettuce, which we barely saw the last two winters:

And, if you needed more evidence, either of the wet soils or of the hazards of trekking into the vineyard, check out my shoes after this morning's photography trip:

Now, our chief worry shifts to early budbreak. We've been reading about it from nearby regions, and were frightened to see photographic evidence of it getting nearer from our neighbors at Adelaida Cellars over the weekend. We're typically a few weeks behind Adelaida and the other less-frosty vineyards at the tops of the hills to the east of us, and are still in a window where a few frosty nights would likely give us a reprieve rather than damage. But barring a freeze, we're on track for an earlier budbreak than last year, when its mid-March arrival led me to write the blog Why we're dreading the 2014 frost season.

Each spring and fall, we send out a selection of six wines to the members of our VINsider Wine Club. In many cases, these are wines that only go out to our club. In others, the club gets a first look at a wine that may see a later national release. An important pre-shipment event for us is the in-house tasting that we conduct, about 6 weeks before the club shipments will be sent out, to help us write the tasting and production notes that will be included in the club shipments. This tasting is often our first post-bottling introduction to wines that we'll come to know intimately in coming weeks and months. This time around, because these shipments include four wines that aren't yet even bottled (they will be next week), I found this get-to-know-you process particularly informative. My main take home message: that the 2013 and 2014 vintages are the best back-to-back vintages we've seen in our history.

This spring's classic shipment is as usual anchored by the Panoplie, our elite wine, dominated by Mourvedre and made from the most compelling, ageworthy lots in the cellar. To that, we've added three varietal wines: two white (2014 Vermentino and 2013 Grenache Blanc) and one red (2012 Tannat), as well as the newest vintage of our rich, vibrant Mourvedre-based Dianthus rosé, and perhaps the most surprising wine of the tasting for me: our 2013 Cotes de Tablas, led by Grenache.

I was joined for the tasting by my dad, and by our winemakers Neil Collins and Chelsea Franchi. First, our notes from the classic (mixed) shipment:

2014 VERMENTINO

Production Notes: Our thirteenth bottling of this traditional Mediterranean varietal, known principally in Sardinia, Corsica, and Northern Italy. It is also grown in the Mediterranean parts of France (particularly Côtes de Provence) where it is known as Rolle. The Vermentino grape produces wines that are bright, clean, and crisp, with distinctive citrus character and refreshing acidity. To emphasize this freshness, we ferment and age Vermentino in stainless steel, and bottle it in screwcap.

Tasting Notes: A classic chalky citrus leaf Vermentino nose, but then surprisingly mouth-filling, long and creamy, but with lots of great savory flavors of citrus pith, saline and wet stone. Great acids on the finish. Really nice, and classic for the Vermentino grape. Drink now and over the next few years.

Production: 1000 cases.

2013 GRENACHE BLANC

Production Notes: 2013 was a great year for Grenache Blanc, with solid quantity and remarkable quality concentrated by a second year of drought. For the varietal Grenache Blanc, we chose lots that were fermented in stainless steel (for brightness) and foudre (for roundness), then blended and bottled in the summer of 2014.

Tasting Notes: Solid and rich on the nose, with quince, baking spices, crystallized ginger and orange marmalade, elevated by a nice citrus blossom character. The mouth is broad and rich, with a touch of Grenache Blanc's signature tannin providing structure on the finish. The flavors were rich and broad, then clean: mimosa, lemon peel and anise. My dad called it "bracing" and "bold" which both seemed right on to me. Drink now and over the next few years.

Production: 700 cases.

2014 DIANTHUS

Production Notes: Our estate rosé is now in the third year under its Dianthus name, chosen for a family of plants with deep-pink flowers. A style between that of Tavel (deeper pink, based on Grenache) and Bandol (less skin contact, based on Mourvedre) this year's blend is heavy on Grenache, for us, at 46% Mourvèdre, 41% Grenache and 13% Counoise. The core of the Dianthus comes from a co-fermented lot from our nursery block, planted in 1994, supplemented by saignées (bleedings) from other Mourvèdre and Grenache lots. This is a deeply colored, flavorful rosé that shows the richness of the classic 2014 vintage. After roughly 24 hours on the skins, the fermentation was completed in stainless steel, and bottled in February 2015.

Tasting Notes: A gorgeous color, like fresh-pressed strawberry juice. The nose shows strawberries too (maybe that's why I thought of the color), watermelon, plum and rose petal. The mouth is rich, with great acids and a powerful floral jasmine element. The finish is long and clean. A rosé to convert people who think that pink wines can't be serious. Drink before the end of 2016.

Production: 1600 cases

2013 COTES DE TABLAS

Production Notes: The Cotes de Tablas is our chance to let Grenache shine, as it does in most Chateauneuf du Pape blends. 2013's drought-reduced yields and moderate growing season produced standout Grenache: juicy and powerful, but not sappy or candied. We blended 55% Grenache with 30% Syrah (for firm tannins, minerality and spice), 10% Counoise (for freshness and brambly wildness) and 5% Mourvedre (for earth and ageability). The wine was blended in June 2014 and aged in foudre until its bottling in February 2015.

Tasting Notes: We heard murmurs of "oh, boy" when people stuck their noses in this. An explosive minty nose of blueberry, licorice, black plum and pepper. There's powerful fruit on the front palate, then firming up with great tannins on the back. There's a luxurious texture, with nice granular tannins and a minty garrigue cooling and lingering on the finish. Just, wow. Neil declared it "as good a Cotes as we've ever made". I think he's understating things; I think it's the best. It's wonderful now, and I know much of it will be drunk in coming months, but I think it's got a decade of development.

Production: 1580 cases

2012 PANOPLIE

Production Notes: As always, Panoplie is selected from lots chosen in the cellar for their richness, concentration and balance, always heaviest on Mourvedre's rich meatiness and firm structure. Each lot was fermented individually before being selected, blended and moved to foudre to age in July 2013. The wine was bottled in August 2014 and has been aged in bottle in our cellars since then. The blend is 70% Mourvèdre, 20% Grenache and 10% Syrah.

Tasting Notes: Rich, deep and meaty on the nose, cassis and new leather, with a wonderful note of violets that I found captivating. The mouth is textured, Mourvedre's signature rare steak character on the front-palate, then elegant and minerally in the mid-palate, showing cocoa powder and loam, with more currants and plums on the finish. A poised and approachable Panoplie, much more so than usual at this stage, more about elegance than sheer power, but that balance and the high percentage of Mourvedre should combine to give it two decades of life.

Production: 650 cases

2012 TANNAT

Production Notes: our ninth bottling of this traditional varietal from South-West France, known principally in the Pyrenees foothills appellation of Madiran, but originally native to the Basque region. Tannat typically has intense fruit, spice, and tannins that produce wines capable of long aging, and it is often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon (in this vintage, 9%) to bring a hint of minty lift.

Tasting Notes: Easily the darkest wine on the table, a luminescent black-red. The aromas are nearly all savory: iron, tobacco, squid ink and wild herbs. Neil called it "the crusty end of a rib roast". On the palate, more bramble and underbrush, iron and dry-aged steak, black fig and baker's chocolate. The finish shows Tannat's signature tannins, smoke and mineral. A wine to watch evolve over decades.

Production: 1000 cases

There were three additional wines (joining the Vermentino and Grenache Blanc) in the white-only shipment:

2013 MARSANNE

Production Notes: The 2013 Tablas Creek Vineyard Marsanne is just our third varietal bottling of Marsanne, the noble white grape of France's Hermitage appellation. We use most of our Marsanne in our Cotes de Tablas Blanc each year. However, in 2013 we felt that the Marsanne was so complete and compelling, and so representative of the Marsanne grape, that we selected out one small lot, fermented in foudre for the first time, for a single-varietal bottling.

Tasting Notes: We worried that the often-subtle Marsanne would suffer after tasting the Tannat, but needn't have. The nose showed vibrant aromas of quince paste, clover honey and newly-laid straw. On the palate, an absolutely classic Marsanne, with preserved lemon, wheat, mineral and honeydew melon, great texture and a hint of tannin on the finish. Quite gorgeous, we all thought. Should drink well for the next five years, maybe longer.

Production: 235 cases

2013 COTES DE TABLAS BLANC

Production Notes: The Cotes de Tablas Blanc is our showcase for the floral, lush fruit of Viognier, given texture, acidity and restraint by the good acids and citrus of Grenache Blanc, and by the gentle minerality of Marsanne. The resulting blend is 39% Viognier, 29% Grenache Blanc, 20% Marsanne and 12% Roussanne, all aged in stainless steel.

Tasting Notes: Open-knit, compared to the Marsanne, with pear and nectarine and minty savory note that we variously identified as tarragon and key lime. The mouth was initially rich: peaches and cream from the Viognier, but bright and with nice minerality on the finish. Clean and compelling. Drink now and over the next few years.

Production: 1250 cases

2013 ROUSSANNE

Production Notes: 2013’s combination of intensity and juiciness was kind to the powerful and sometimes austere Roussanne grape, bringing lushness and openness to complement its characteristic structured profile. We fermented the Roussanne lots that were selected for our varietal bottling roughly 50% in foudre, 35% in small, older neutral oak barrels, and 15% in new demi-muids. The selected lots were blended in April 2014 then aged through the subsequent harvest before bottling in February 2015.

Tasting Notes: Not yet bottled, the 2013 Roussanne was the second vintage of our 100% Roussanne that we aged in foudre through the subsequent harvest, and we agreed that like the 2012, this wine showed the benefits of that longer elevage. Aromas of beeswax, lacquered wood, white flowers and yellow pear, with rich, broad flavors of honey and pear, some nicely integrated sweet oak, and a long, rich, slightly spicy finish. Appealing in its youth (moreso than many vintages of our Roussanne) but should also develop over the next decade.

Production: 700 cases

Two additional reds joined the Cotes de Tablas, Panoplie, and Tannat in the red-only shipment:

2013 PATELIN DE TABLAS

Production Notes: Patelin is French slang for "neighborhood" and the Patelin de Tablas is our wine sourced from our many great neighborhood Rhone vineyards. We base the wine on the spicy savoriness of Syrah, with Grenache providing juiciness and freshness, Mourvedre structure, and just a dash of Counoise. Fermented in a mix of upright oak fermenters and stainless steel tanks and aged in foudre and stainless steel, it was bottled in July 2014 and aged in bottle to round into its structure.

Tasting Notes: An appealing nose of chocolate, cherry, cranberry, mint and graphite, balanced between Syrah's savoriness and Grenache's juiciness. It's fresh, juicy and friendly on the palate, with Grenache's signature purple fruit and Syrah's minerality and spice. Some nice chalky tannins on the finish frame the wine and suggest that for all its approachability, it will develop additional complexity over the next 5+ years.

Production: 5900 cases

2012 FULL CIRCLE

Production Notes: 2012 is the third vintage of our Full Circle Pinot Noir, grown on the small vineyard outside Robert Haas's family home in Templeton, in the cool (for Paso) newly-approved Templeton Gap AVA. Its name reflects his career: from a start introducing America to the greatness of Burgundy, through decades focusing on grapes from the Rhone, he's now growing Pinot at home. The grapes were fermented in one-ton microfermenters, punched down twice daily by hand. After pressing, the wine was moved into year-old Marcel Cadet 60-gallon barrels, for a hint of oak. The wine stayed on its lees, stirred occasionally, for a year and a half before being blended and bottled in April 2014.

Tasting Notes: The nose is smoky red cherry, with leather, milk chocolate, and chaparral. The mouth is dark and compelling (Chelsea called it "sultry" and "jazz lounge") with nice grippy tannins that clean up the richness and suggest a good life ahead. Sun and forest and fresh berries: a great warm climate expression of Pinot Noir. Drink over the coming decade.

Production: 350 cases

If you're a wine club member, you should make your reservation for our shipment tasting party, where we open all the wines in the most recent club shipment for VINsiders to try. This spring's party will be on Sunday, April 9th. If you're not a wine club member, and you've read all this way, then why not join up, while there's still a chance to get this spring shipment? Details and how to join are at tablascreek.com/wine_club/vinsider_club

And yet, with reported temperatures in the 80s around California, our highs here the last few days have topped out in the low-60s. The local temperature map from Weather Underground from this afternoon illustrates (click to enlarge):

Notice the gradient: 80 in Santa Maria. 79 in San Luis Obispo. 77 in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains just south of Monterey. Heck, it's 73 in Cambria, just over the mountains from us. But Paso Robles is just 64 degrees. This pattern -- warm on the coasts and the inland areas open to the Pacific, but cooler in more inland climates like ours -- is normal in the winter, and often overlooked when people discuss the climate here.

This difference, already dramatic enough in the afternoon, is even more pronounced in the nights and early mornings. We typically see 20-30 frost nights a year here in Paso, while San Luis Obispo sees only a few. Here, you see apples, grapes, and other crops that benefit from full dormancy planted, while when you go over the mountains to the coast, you see citrus and avocado groves. It's routine for me to get up into foggy, low-40's winter mornings and drive down to San Luis, where it's in the 60's and sunny.

Why does all this matter for us? Because the beginning of the grape growing season is determined by the accumulated heat during the winter. Last year, after a warm start to 2014, regions in more moderated climates (think Edna Valley, or the Santa Lucia Highlands) saw an exceptionally early start to their growing season. This led to a growing cycle that began in February, with veraison in June and harvests that began, in some cases, in July. Yes, our early 2014 was warm compared to normal, but we didn't see anything like this. From last year's post Veraison in June? Not so fast, in Paso Robles at least:

How close were we to a similarly early start? I'd point to the nights of February 4th and 5th, both of which got down to 29 degrees here. That doesn't sound like much, but it meant that even with the warm weather that followed, our budbreak didn't start until mid-March. The more coastal regions didn't get a frost after December, and I remember driving through the Santa Maria Valley in the second half of February and marveling that their vines were already showing green.

If you needed more evidence, our winter cool is just another way in which Paso has cool climate aspects as well as warm. It's warm, in summer (but cold in the winter). It's hot, during the day (but cold at night). It's exactly this dichotomy that we loved when we settled here: this balance between the elements that bring sweet fruit and rich texture (the California sun, our warm days, and our long growing season) and those that maintain our savory notes and our freshness (the cold nights and winters, and our altitude).

Just when you think you have Paso Robles pigeonholed, it offers something new. Plan your next trip for winter, if you don't believe me.

Last year, I debuted a weekly feature on the blog called Weekly Roundup, focusing on interesting news from our communities (Rhone and Paso Robles), fun articles that we'd found on the world of wine, and pieces from other social media channels that we thought would interest a wider audience.

Unfortunately, the series never got a lot of traction. I didn't hear much feedback about it, we didn't get many comments (1, in all the articles) and it didn't get shared or clicked on all that much when we posted it. And it was a fair amount of work to do each week, some of which frankly didn't have all that much that was exciting going on in our community. So, I've decided to rechristen this as a roughly monthly endeavor, and make its focus more explicitly on our community. So, please welcome the Community Roundup: an occasional foray into what else is going on in our world. These are things that we think are sufficiently noteworthy and of interest to our audience to be worth sharing, but maybe less than a full post each.

And please continue to share your own feedback on this series in the comments section. Is it something that you've enjoyed and would like to continue to see? Are there areas that you'd like to see more of? Thanks in advance!

Two Awards for Two Iconic Figures This week, we've been pleased to hear that two industry veterans for whom we have enormous respect are receiving major awards.

The first is Stephan Asseo, whose desire to combine the strengths of Bordeaux and the Rhone introduced a new kind of fusion into Paso Robles. Stephan began making wine in 1982, and for the next 15 years developed a formidable reputation in Bordeaux. Looking to escape the restrictions of France's appellation controlee system, he came to Paso Robles, where he founded L'Aventure Winery in 1998. His work in the seventeen years since has played a major role in establishing Paso Robles as the home for some of the most innovative garagiste winemakers in California, and brought to prominence the "Paso Blend", combining grapes from different Old World traditions into something uniquely Paso. We are excited to learn that Stephan will be presented with the 2015 Wine Industry Person of the Year award from the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance. Photo (right) is from the L'Aventure Facebook page.

The second award recipient is Bob Lindquist, whose pioneering work at Qupe Winery was one of our inspirations, showing since 1982 that great Rhone varieties could be made in California's Central Coast. Bob, throughout his time at Qupe, has been a tireless advocate for the wines of the Rhone, and a generous, patient, and humble figure in the movement. He doesn't ever call attention to himself, which is one of the joys of his receiving only the third-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhone Rangers: that he'll get some richly deserved time in the limelight. My dad received this award last year, and the ceremony was great. If you missed it, I wrote a blog after that includes the amazing tribute video presented at his ceremony. If you're interested in joining for the celebration, you can; Bob's award will be presented at the Rhone Rangers San Francisco Winemaker Dinner. Photo (right) is from the Qupe Web site.

Snow in the RhoneThe Famille Perrin Instagram account is chock-full of great images, but one really stuck out this past week. Snow isn't exactly a rarity in the Rhone Valley; they get a dusting at some point most years, but heavy snow is. The photo that they shared of Gigondas under a heavy white blanket was stunning:

New Direct Shipping OpportunitiesEarlier in January, I wrote a long piece on the state of wine shipping in the United States. It wasn't really germane to the article -- which dealt more with the levels of expense and regulation within the three-dozen shipping states -- but it seems like there's been a little flurry of opportunity in opening some of the roughly dozen states that still prohibit all wine shipping. Not only is Massachusetts set to open any day now, but the South Dakota legislature is debating a viable shipping bill, as is Indiana, and I've been hearing rumors that Pennsylvania is likely to move on wine shipping before the end of the year. As always, the best place to go is Free the Grapes, where you can learn what's being debated and use their built-in templates to write state legislatures.

Drink for Thought: Wine State or Beer State?

I'm a sucker for maps. There were several interesting ones, including the one above, in the Washington Post's article Do you live in beer country or wine country? These maps will tell you. The take-home message for me was that where there are wineries, there are likely breweries too. Of course, there are hotspots where one or the other dominates, but fewer than you might think. This is why I've found the reported worry in some corners of the wine community over the rise of craft beer silly. In general, the people who love good wine love good beer, and increasingly, vice versa. And more importantly, the people who love interesting wine look for interesting beer. Nowhere more so than winery cellars. The old adage that "it takes lots of good beer to make good wine" is absolutely true, in my experience. Cheers!

In mid-December, we seemed set for a great rainfall winter. A series of storms had dropped 7.75 inches over three weeks, with measurable rainfall fifteen different days of twenty-two and no more than two consecutive rain-free days. We were ahead of our annual averages, and the winter felt promising: air laden with moisture, hillsides getting greener by the day, and spectacular sunsets due to the frequent clouds.

Fast-forward to early February, and things look less promising. January was one of the driest on record throughout California, with no measurable precipitation in San Francisco and not much more on the Central Coast. At Tablas Creek, we got only 0.23 inches for the month, less than 5% of what we would expect in what's normally the wettest month of the year. Here's how the year has looked so far:

(Rainfall averages are 1942-2014 as listed on the Paso Robles City Web site, and extrapolated to our wetter microclimate here west of town. My multiplier was 1.77, the ratio between the 25" of rain that long-time residents out in our Adelaida area report as average and the 14.11" average shown on the Paso city site.)

Even though December's rain didn't include the massive storms that often provide the bulk of coastal California's precipitation, we ended the month at 111% of normal winter-to-date precipitation. One month later, we're at 69% of normal precipitation and things don't look so good. We have only to look at the winter of 2012-2013 for an example of a seemingly great beginning to the rainy season that petered out dramatically after January 1st:

A more hopeful example is last year. The winter of 2013-2014 saw nearly all our rainfall come late in the season, with January totally dry:

And there is potential relief in sight, with an "atmospheric river" of moisture set to hit Northern California this coming weekend. Whether it will make it this far south is still an open question, but at least it will hopefully bring a pattern change. As nice as it is to sit outside in the sun while our friends and relatives in the northeast are battered by snowstorms, each day without rain is significant: we have roughly 26 weeks to get our 25 inches of rain. Each rainless week is nearly 4% of our potential lost, and a rainless January puts us in a 21% hole for the winter.

The vineyard certainly doesn't look at first, or even second, glance like it's suffering from drought. The cover crop is deep, green and lush, to the point that we're having to deploy our animal herd to crisis points where we need to knock back the greenery. I took a photo last week of our new puppy nearly lost underneath the growth, and it's only grown deeper since:

The ground underneath is still wet enough that walking through the vineyard leaves you with soggy shoes. But despite this veneer of green, the drought is no less real. There is no water in Tablas Creek, nor in most of the other local watersheds. The reservoirs have barely budged from their historically low levels of last summer. And ground water remains diminished, though it's less of an issue at a time of year when few wells are in much demand. The NOAA has kept much of California, and all of San Luis Obispo County, under its "Exceptional Drought" category, barely budging from the beginning of the rainy season:

The next few weeks will be critical if we hope to climb out of this rainfall deficit we're in. A wet February would build on the base we got in December and if not provide macro-level drought relief, would set the stage for a more or less normal growing season. A dry February means we're almost certainly into year four of this historic drought.

Just after Christmas, Jason and I had the fun and honor to be invited to pour Tablas Creek for guests at the last 49ers game of the season. The sparkling new Levi's Stadium has built-in wine bars incorporated into their club boxes, and the team invites eight wineries each week to show their wines to the fans sitting in that section. We poured before the game and during the half, and were able to watch the 49ers win from one of the boxes, whose owners we'd met during the pouring. Yes, it was a down year for the Niners, but still, what a treat!

It is wonderful to see how the 49ers have built their connection to California's wine country, and how they celebrate it at the games. The program started, in a small way, with an invitation to the owner's box at Candlestick Park on the occasion of their first home game in the fall of 2002. We were thrilled that, way back then, Tablas Creek was the winery chosen to inaugurate the tradition. Over the next decade, a different winery was chosen to present its wines at each subsequent game.

On that first occasion, my wife Barbara and I (right, with team owner Dr. John York) joined Jason and his wife Meghan on the trip. We watched the game from the York family box and got to join a tour of the field where we watched for a few minutes from the sidelines. I strongly remember Terrell Owens catching a pass and heading my way with terrifying speed and power. I stepped way back. And oh yes, by the way, we met other invitees Senator Diane Feinstein, chef Thomas Keller, Mayor Willie Brown, running back Roger Craig, and baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda who also dropped by. Quite a day, and a pleasure to get to spend some time with the 49ers owner, John York.

Last year, the 49ers commemorated Candlestick Park's final season with a "greatest hits" recap of the wineries who'd been invited over the previous decade. We were again honored to receive an invitation from Dr. York, and I made the trip up with Jason and Meghan, and their son Eli (right) to watch the team defeat the Arizona Cardinals.

Since the team's move to Levi's Stadium this year, the program has been expanded and acquired a name: Appellation 49. With eight wineries showing wines in the atrium at the club level, wineries get to meet several hundred fans at each game, and over the course of the season, owners of the boxes get to taste the wares of 80 different wineries. If they like something, they can order it from their box. A portion of the proceeds go to the 49ers Foundation, which does great work in the Bay Area community year-round. Different than before but still great fun, and probably more valuable promotion for us as a winery.

It's clear that this connection with the local wine community is something that the York family values and is looking to build. Any time they ask us to help with this particular bit of bridge-building, we're happy to oblige.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

As we look forward to tonight's 226th State of the Union address, I am struck by the "more perfect union" reference in the preamble, as well as the wisdom of the founding fathers and generations of Supreme Court justices in prioritizing the Commerce Clause, which protects the federal government's exclusive role in regulating interstate commerce. The 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933 and as a side-effect sheltered states from the Commerce Clause's requirement to maintain an open, fair market for all players, provides a glimpse into what a world absent the Commerce Clause might look like. We should all be thankful that most products we might want to buy don't have to face a similar regulatory nightmare.

So, in honor of the State of the Union, here is a summary of what the world of wine shipping looks like, from a winery's perspective, as we enter 2015, with states broken down into tiers based on the cost and ease of doing business there:

Right now, there are three states (and one district) that have neither permit fees nor significant reporting requirements. Thank goodness for them! But, 4 of 51 isn't a great percentage. All of the others make it more difficult or expensive to ship wine to customers who want it.

There are an additional ten states with permit fees of $330/year or less and modest reporting requirements (6-16 times per year). These states include some big ones like our home state of California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Colorado, but even for the smaller ones, the number of orders that a winery would need to fill in order to pay for the annual investment is very reasonable.

Once you get to the next tier of fourteen, a small winery would be excused for starting to run cost-benefit analyses before springing for the permits. Some permits start to get expensive in this tier, like Tennessee's $450/year, Wisconsin's $400/year, or Maryland's $380/year. Others are less expensive, or even free, but have difficult reporting requirements, like North Carolina (28 reports/year) or Georgia, New Mexico, Oregon, Wyoming and Washington (24 reports/year each). Still, there are some pretty large-population states in this tier, and most wineries choose to ship to all or nearly all of them.

Total percentage of US population: 27.79%

Total number of reports required annually: 267 (19.1/state avg.)

Total permit fees: $3126 ($223/state avg.)

Tier IV: Difficult/expensive but worth the cost (TX, VA)

This is a tier with just two states. Both are expensive (Texas's permit costs $526/year and requires 20 reports annually, while Virginia's permit is only $160/year but requires the submission of 36 reports) but both are also big enough to justify the cost.

The main difference between this tier and the one above it is in the potential reward, rather than the expense. Its five states are all small, and all expensive: as much as $600/year for the permit (South Carolina) and as many as 36 reports per year (West Virginia). While nearly every winery ships to Texas and Virginia, there are many who don't ship to these five smaller states with often disproportionate costs and reporting requirements.

Total percentage of the US population: 3.65%

Total number of reports required annually: 112 (22.4/state avg.)

Total permit fees: $1766 ($353/state avg.)

Every winery has a different breaking point. For us, it comes here. We've decided that the 35 states above all warrant the expense of the annual permits and the reporting, though it's a close call on some in that last tier. The 16 states below we either can't ship to, or have found that the requirements to do are unreasonable. But before I look at those, it's worth doing the math on what shipping to the 35 "shipping" states costs in total: $6853 in permits plus the time and expense of preparing and filing 546 reports each year. Figure an hour for each report, at $25/hour ($13,650) for a total expense of $20,503. But for that cost, we can ship to 76.5% of the US population. Available tools (like ShipCompliant, which we use and recommend highly) provide a savings over the labor of preparing the many individual reports, but still come with a cost.

Why don't states make the cut? The reasons vary, and you'll notice that some of the "no-ship" states fall into more than one category. But in most cases, you'll see some effort toward protecting distributors from competition, at the expense of both consumers and wineries.

On-site purchase requirements (AZ, IN, RI, SD, DE)

There are states that will allow a winery to ship (typically with few or no hurdles) if someone purchases wine at the winery, but won't allow the same customer to order wine by phone or email from home. The logic written into the laws is typically couched in the guise of ensuring that only of-age buyers can purchase, but given that common carriers routinely check ID's in the 30+ states that allow direct shipping, it doesn't pass critical muster.

Distributor exclusivity (IN, LA)

There are two states that explicitly say that wineries can ship only if they don't have a relationship with a distributor in that state. While this does protect distributors from competition from the suppliers they represent, I wonder if it discourages many smaller wineries from signing up with a distributor from those states. The two states (Indiana and Louisiana) are both just large enough markets (2% and 1.5% of the US population, respectively) and just far enough away from California that we've decided that it's not worth foregoing the wholesale business we do for an uncertain amount of direct business.

Capacity caps (AZ, NJ)

The capacity cap is the distributor lobby's wedge issue of choice at the moment. It writes into law that wineries below a certain size may ship direct to consumers, while wineries at or above that size must use the 3-tier system and sell their wine through traditional channels. Typically, this capacity cap is set just above the size of the state's largest winery, protecting all the local wineries' business models while shielding distributors from as much competition as possible. In the recent case of Massachusetts, the link was made so explicit (it was promoted on the floor of the legislature) that a federal appeals court declared it in violation of the Granholm v. Heald decision that established the primacy of the Commerce Clause in the interstate shipment of wine. But in other cases it has withstood legal challenge, and with New Jersey's recent capacity cap bill and a push last year to add one in Florida, it seems likely we'll see more in the future. The capacity caps have been set as low as 25,000 gallons (roughly 10,000 cases) in places like Arizona (which we don't fall under), and as high as 250,000 gallons in New Jersey and Ohio (which we do).

Label registration (CT)

Connecticut is a shipping state for many wineries, but it's not without its expenses and challenges. First, it's the third-most-expensive permit, at $595/year, and requires 28 reports to be filed annually. Second, you must register each label you propose to sell in the state at a cost of $200/label, renewable every 3 years. At Tablas Creek, we sold 28 different wines direct last year (different wines, not different vintages). That would require a $5600 investment, adding $1866 to the already-considerable annual $1295 cost of permit and reporting.

Death by 1000 Cuts (NJ)

New Jersey grudgingly entered the ranks of direct shipping wineries with the passage of a bill in 2012. So far, only a tiny fraction of the nearly 10,000 American wineries have done so. Why would only 237 wineries have received a permit, in the country's fifth-largest wine market? Let us count the ways:

The permit (a sliding scale, but for us $938) is the country's most expensive and the are 24 reports to submit annually

There is a significant bond wineries have to post

There are registration fees of $150 per partner per year, an issue for a winery like ours owned by two families, each with several owners

Receiving a permit means that we have established a nexus with the state of NJ and are liable for paying an annual corporate income tax of at least $500

There's a capacity cap to ship that we fall under, but many wineries don't

And the coup de grace is that anyone who owns at least 10% of the winery must satisfy the same laws that govern the ownership of a liquor store or liquor wholesaler in the state, which precludes foreign residency.

The good: most of the states that don't allow the shipping of wine in any situation are among the smallest wine markets in the country. Other than Pennsylvania, the six prohibition states combine to make up just 3.3% of the American wine market.

The bad: Pennsylvania is the country's 6th-largest state and 10th-largest wine market

The good: it seems like there is momentum building to finally get Pennsylvania's direct shipping laws changed. Given the challenges now (you can technically ship, but only to a state store, and only if no other vintage of that wine is in the state store system, and the recipient has to come to the state store to pick up and pay all the taxes) welcoming Pennsylvania to the post-Granholm world would be a huge boon for all wineries in 2015.